Follow Blog via Email

Strap on your motorcycle helmets, because Black Rain is the Greatest Movie EVER!

Click on the movie poster or the title above to download our review of the film, featuring special guest host Jeremy from Destroy All Podcasts-DX.

Review in a Nutshell: Ostensibly a police thriller, Black Rain is more of an excuse for Michael Douglas and Ridley Scott to stomp through the Land of the Rising Sun with enormous, hob-nailed boots. As a cinematic artifact from the Eighties representing American cultural anxiety, it’s hard to beat this surprisingly crazy film.

16 Responses

Oh, Gods – I remember this movie! What the writers knew of Japanese culture could be fit into a thimble, with room left over for Michelle Bachmann’s brains. A cursory view of anime would give you a more realistic view of contemporary Japan than this film did – and the plot was just…stupid.

The Transformers episode Jeremy was thinking of is “The Burden Hardest to Bear” from season 3. Its kinda ironic because it deals with Rodimus Prime coming to terms with the responsibilty of being leader of the Autobots. No sooner does this episode come out then we get the 2-parter “The Return of Optimus Prime”

Love to hear the MAX HEADROOM pilot – either the UK or US version, Paul!

Just listened to the BLACK RAIN podcast while at the hospital having my blood taken – that was less painful than remembering this movie was. I wasn’t aware Scott made it on a tighter budget than normal

OTOH, Matsuda’s young punk gangster planning to wipe out Wakayama’s “Moustache Pete” yakuza and take over would probably cut off part of his pinkie as a sign of Good Faith to the other yakuza he’d end up ruling. When they asked why he had to murder his oyabun, he cold show off his missing pinkie and allege that It Wasn’t His Fault It Went South and He Had to Kill The Old Man – he was set up, thus proving his oyabun had no honor!

I’ll bet Ridley Scott didn’t know Tomisaburo Wakayama or Ken Takakura from Godzilla, because All Those Japanese Look the Same to Him. It was probably one of those deals where producers (Jaffe and Lansing) told him “If we’re going to sell this (racist and culturally tone-deaf!) movie in the Far East, we’ll need some Japanese stars” – then told their Far East Distributors “Don’t worry – just re-edit and re-dub the movie so Takakura’s the hero, and Douglas is his foul-mouthed dumb-ass gaijin ride-along.” I wonder if they actually did that, and the movie plays very differently in Japan than it does here….

I might have liked the movie a bit better if they’d ended it like the NuWHO episode “Tooth and Claw”, where Queen Victoria knighted The Doctor and Rose – then banished them forever, and set up Torchwood so she’d have a way to stop The Doctor should he ever return!

When you were talking about Ridley Scott in this episode, you mentioned that you hadn’t seen anything before Alien (I think it was, it’s been a couple of days). If you want to have your head explode, watch his very first feature film:
The Duelists.
It may actually be one of the greatest movies ever (%100 on Rotten Tomatoes), and it represents an incredible first work. Scott then proceeded to distance himself from almost everything he did right in that film for the rest of his career. Don’t be scared away by the period-piece look, this is an actually great film.